Mango Languages

Turning your guilty pleasure pastimes into language learning opportunities.

We all have them: those guilty pleasure free time activities we take part in when we should probably be folding the laundry or calling our moms. Maybe it’s reading gossip magazines. Or streaming just one more episode of How I Met Your Mother.

I’ve found that the best way to integrate language learning into your daily life is to make it part of your favorite guilty pleasure activities. This way, you can get rid of the guilt by knowing that you’re helping to improve your language skills.

Here are the ways I’ve found to learn French while partaking in some of my guilty pleasure pastimes.
I waste tons of time: ______.
Flipping through interior design magazines.


This one’s easy: I subscribed to French magazines instead of American ones. Now I can get my fill of stunning cuisines and elegant salons all while brushing up on my household French vocabulary words.

I waste tons of time _____.
Watching stand-up comedy clips on YouTube.

I could watch stand-up comedy all day. And thanks to the breath of stand-up videos on YouTube, I’ve nearly done just that. But now, when I need a laugh, I look to Francophone humoristes. It’s a hilarious way to work on your listening comprehension. Plus, you feel oh-so-accomplished when you understand all of the punch lines.
(My favorites: Gad Elmaleh and Patrick Huard.)

I waste tons of time _____.
Browsing social media sites.

Don’t we all? Facebook and Twitter are huge time sucks. And don’t even get me started on sites with infinite scroll like Tumblr or Pinterest. To make good use of the time I spend on my favorite social networks, I’ve liked, followed or friended native speakers or French-language pages and accounts. Now, when I skim through my newsfeed, most of the updates are in French. And many posts link to interesting news articles or blog posts that are also in French. And voilà! My social media addiction is now much more productive.

What are your guilty pleasure pastimes? What ways have you found to integrate language learning into your daily activities?